I hate to leave, but the clock only ticks in one direction, and whatever goodwill Stella might have stored away grows shorter with every minute that passes. “I guess I’d better get going home. Thanks, y’all, for the breakfast.”
“You are not riding your bike home in that weather,” says Agnes.
I glance outside. The rain hasn’t let up, even a little bit. Stella’s is a lot farther than home, but I don’t have a choice. Hattie will give me the silent treatment until the baby comes if I fail to get a birthday cake for Tyler. “I’ll be fine.”
“Freddie, you take my car and get her home. My water aerobics class doesn’t start until ten.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
Agnes makes me wait on the porch while Freddie throws my bike into the trunk of her Cadillac. Once he’s started the car and pulled it down the driveway alongside the walkway, I turn to Agnes. “Thanks again,” I tell her.
She gives me a soft kiss on the cheek, and it spreads a bit of warmth through my chest, reminding me of all the ways she was a better mom to me during those summers than my mom ever was.
I dart though the pouring rain to the passenger-side door.
The interior of Agnes’s car is beige and spotless with wooden beaded seat covers. I’m careful to keep my feet on the mat as Freddie reverses out of the driveway. The windshield wipers are working overtime to combat the relentless downpour.
“Which way?”
The clock on the dash says nine a.m. The bakery’s been open for hours already. I feel like a jerk asking, but this would save me so much time. “Actually, I’m supposed to go by the bakery for Hattie. Would you mind dropping me there instead?”
He shrugs. “Tell me the way.”
“You don’t mind?”
He shakes his head. “Only thing waiting at home for me are more boxes.”
Stella’s Bakery is a little lemon drop of a building—a tiny yellow square made of bricks that Stella’s grandsons repaint for her every summer. A least, it is when you can see it. Right now, it’s a smudge of yellow behind a sheet of gray.
“I can’t believe this place is still here,” says Freddie as we dash through the rain.
I grip the door handle. “The only thing that really changes here are the people who pass through.”
Inside, Stella herself sits on a creaking wooden stool with an old Regency romance novel held up to her nose. Stella may look like every other sweet, old white lady in town, but sweet she is not. The old guys who normally take their coffee and beignets outside are crowded around the little bar that lines the front window. They speak in sighs and grunts and whistles.
The floors are sticky with powdered sugar, and every inhalation is a rush of sweet dough. The glass cases are full of all kinds of pastries, ranging from beignets to plain old bagels. None of them look quite perfect, because Stella is of the mind that food is meant for tasting and not for looking.
“What’ll it be?” asks Stella without looking up, her doughy fingers drumming the countertop.
If I don’t get this cake, Hattie is going to chain me to a tree, pour honey on me, and leave me there until a bear comes along. Hattie came to me last week and said she bought Tyler a new gaming console and that didn’t leave much for cake. I wanted to say no, but I keep telling myself that this is for her. Not him. Even though, actually, it is.
I inch my way toward the counter. I swear this woman can smell fear. “I know it’s asking a lot, but I need a cake for tomorrow—”
“No can do.” She looks up with a grin, and I am positive that Stella is one of those people who take deep pleasure in saying no. She taps her finger on a piece of paper taped to the counter that readsCUSTOM ORDERS REQUIRE 48 HR NOTICE. “And while we’re at it, let me give you a little earful about you throwing my paper right in the path of my sprinkler. By the time I get home every morning, the damn thing is soaked through to the funnies section.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll do better in the future, I swear. But if you could—”
She taps her sign once more.
I nudge Freddie and turn to leave. “Let’s go.”
Freddie clears his throat and steps forward. “Miss Stella,” he says, the twang in his voice dipping so far south it’s borderline cartoonish. “My grandmama, Agnes Pearl Freemont, told me to tell you hello and that she’d like a dozen croissants.”
She picks her head up again and grins, and this time it’s the kind of grin that boys like Freddie are used to causing. Stella smacks the counter and digs her fists into her hips. “You tell that Agnes the only reason I forgive her for not coming around here herself is because she sent such a dashing young fella in her place. You must be as tall as your grandpapa.”
He nods. “Taller, ma’am. And, uh, he passed away four years ago now.”
Stella shakes her head as she piles her croissants and a few extra pigs in a blanket into one of her light-pink boxes. “Nothing fair ’bout that.”
